Dagobah
by Morwen Tindomerel
Summary: The younglings' life and training on Dagobah
1. Chapter 1

A deep thrumming roar filled the dim, misty clearing sending assorted lifeforms scampering and slithering for cover as a pair of standard escape pods descended, balanced on tiny white flames, to settle near each other on folding fin-like legs. A hatch cracked and lowered becoming a stepped ramp to the ground and a small, green, large eared being in brown and white robes emerged followed by a small, fair haired Human boy and an equally young brown skinned Zabrak. The second pod opened and three little girls descended hesitantly; a sleek black haired Human, a fox haired Theelin and a fragile, winged Iegoan who moved quickly to join the Master and the boys.

Yoda looked around and took a deep breath of moist air, thick with organic smells. "Well, younglings, our new home this is. What think you?"

"It's so _alive,_" Vita, the human girl said taking in the giant gnarl trees and hanging vines with bright, round eyes.

Yoda nodded his approval. "Alive, yes, full of life is this world. Focus on the moment you must, feel the Living Force encompassing all will you."

The children spread out a little, obediently opening themselves to the moment and the flow of the Force as Yoda watched. Suddenly Uthr, the little Zabrak, jerked back as if burned. "Master, over there – something bad, I can feel it!"

Yoda moved quickly to comfort the trembling child. "Yes, yes, know about that I do. A Dark Side vergence that is, and why I chose this place." Uthr, Vita, blond Tam Shadowstalker and Aiolian the little Iegoan Angel all stared at their aged mentor. "Want to be near it we do. Hide our Force-sense it will."

"Oh," Uthr looked back towards the source of the Dark emanations, small face doubtful. His fellow students looked equally unenthusiastic.

Yoda chuckled. "Near it we must stay – but not too near!" He waved his gimmerstick in the opposite direction. "That way we will go, find a good place for our house we will."

The little Theelin had already started in that direction, and apparently missed the entire discussion being absorbed in a staring contest with a gigantic snake, its formidably fanged jaws just inches from her face. "Ah, see, a new friend Keri has made already!" The serpent turned startled towards the Master then shot back up the tree.

"Not really," Keri answered Yoda. "I was just telling it I'm not food."

"Got the message, it did." Yoda said briskly. "Now, follow me, younglings!"

…

_Four Years Later:_

Rain pounded the already soggy swampland, churning the murky waters of Dragonsnake Bog and deepening the normal twilight to near blackness. A small, lithe figure in sloth skin tunic and leggings ran lightly over the quivering muck bordering the bog, danced along a thick blackvine bridge crossing a watery channel then leapt from gnarl tree root to root, dodging between invisible obstacles, on her way to small point of friendly yellow light very near to the ground.

Vita stooped under the round door that had only recently gotten too low for her to enter upright scraping the mud off her bare feet on the coolant grill that served as a threshold.

"Wet clothes off, off I say!" Master Yoda ordered from the kitchen area where he was cooking dinner. Vita obediently stripped off her soaked sloth skins and threw them outside then wrapped herself in one of the fur robes they kept by the door for just such emergencies. Tam handed her a towel for her hair.

The little wattle and daub house was well lit by the emergency lamps from the escape pods, warmed by the fire in the stove and full of activity. The Master was busily cutting up swamp squash and mushrooms for the salad while a simmering pot of fish and eel stew sent out appetizing smells. Tam knelt at the stump table grinding galla seeds in a little mortar to garnish the yoghurt plant pudding on the kitchen bench. Aiolian was at the loom weaving bleached moss cloth for her new dress while Uthyr sat cross legged in the window seat on the other side of the house spinning lumpy yarn from gnarl tree fiber. Keri occupied the remaining floorspace – such as it was – performing the standard sabre drill with the Master's lightsabre.

"You are over controlling, little one," Master Qui-Gon's warm, kindly voice said out of nowhere. "Relax, Padawan, let the Force flow through you." Keri's face, scrunched in concentration, gradually smoothed out and so did her moves.

"And where have you been so late, Vita,hmmm?" Master Yoda asked, still apparently intent on mixing his salad.

"I went southwest today, Master, past Sweetwater lake, and I found and old clearing, no gnarl trees just mushrooms and vines, and there were buildings, Master! Domed modules with all kinds of things inside them –"

Yoda interrupted her excitement with something like alarm. "Alone here, we are!" it was a question and Master Qui-Gon answered it: "There is no sentient life on Dagobah but ourselves - now."

"It looked like they just abandoned everything when they went," Vita said.

"Go tomorrow we all will and see what you have found," Yoda decided.

….

Yoda stumped solidly through the drifting mists and eerie animal cries of a Dagobah morning his small pupils skipping and running as they played tag in a loose ring around him, Aiolian occasionally becoming airborn for a few minutes and Uthr and Vita taking time out to creep into the miniature jungles of roots beneath the looming gnarl trees. Keri found a lahdia plant and filled her pouch with flower fruits and Tam jumped on a wandering white spider for a short ride.

The ruined settlement was just outside their usual range explaining why they hadn't found it long ago. It consisted of two big domes surrounded by a ring of smaller ones all linked by tubular passages. The buildings were covered with heavy growths of vines and hatches hung askew where questing tendrils had forced their way inside. The roofline was uneven, several of the domes having been pulled out of plumb as their foundations subsided into the Dagobah muck.

Yoda bent his head, eyes closed and ears drooping as he searched the Force. "Much fear there was in this place, fear and death. A research station it was, lost, forgotten. The scientists all died."

The children looked at him, horrified and incredulous. "But why," Vita stammered, "and how?"

"Dagobah it was; killed them the planet did." The Master answered sadly.

"No," said Tam, "Master that can't be!"

Keri nodded emphatic agreement, mouth stained purple-red by the lahdia berries she was munching. "Dagobah's a good place to live! We haven't had any trouble."

"Well there was the dragon snake we had to kill," Uthr reminded her.

"And the bogwings that attacked Aiolian," added Vita.

"That was my fault," the little Angel said, "I threatened their young."

"Live with the planet we do, in harmony," Yoda explained. "As adversaries did these people live, at enmity with the world, and so they died." A long moment of very serious silence followed the Master's words. Finally he broke it; "Come, investigate we will, things we can use there may be."

Dagoban muck had oozed in through doors and splitting floors and the domes colonized by the usual rich assortment of Dagoban life. Anything even remotely organic had been devoured long ago but the plasmeld panels that made up floors and walls were mostly intact as were the plasteel ribs that held them in place. Clearsteel panes lay intact on the muddy floors having been popped from their frames by the invading vines. A wide variety of items lay half buried in ooze; broken furniture, badly corroded and mud clogged electronics, plastic tableware, and datachips, lots and lots of datachips, though blaster power cells were almost as common.

The children quickly forgot their distress in the excitement of the treasure hunt, digging into the silted floors and running to Yoda with their finds. The aged Master carefully examined each object, wiping it off with a piece of rough gnarlfiber cloth then either throwing it behind him as a discard or placing it carefully on another larger piece of cloth to be carried home. But it wasn't until nearly noon that Tam and Keri made the most exciting find yet.

"Master,Master, come and see!" Keri hurtled into the central dome where Yoda had settled himself amongst his bits and pieces. "We've found droids, lots and lots of droids!"

"Of limited use, droids are to us," the Master observed inarguably, "but come and see I will."

'Lots and lots' turned out to be the remains of four A9G archive droids and about twice as many R5s adapted as sample collectors. "Best equipment they did not have," Yoda remarked dryly.

Tam had the access panels of all four A9Gs open. "They're a real mess, Master," he said cheerfully.

"Little use for droids have we," Yoda pointed out yet again. Possibly it was the looks of disappointment on Tam and Keri's faces that caused him to backtrack. "Well, well, play with them you may, but first see what else here there is."

"Yes, Master!"

The next big find was made by Aiolian and Vita, an armored speeder sunk deep in the Dagoban mud and concealed under a thick blanket of vines with a fine crop of fungi growing around its thruster tubes. The girls in fact owed their discovery to the latter it wasn't until they started picking the yoghurt plants and mushrooms that they realized the surface under them wasn't just another chunk of rotting tree fall.

Yoda looked on indulgently as all five younglings enthusiastically joined in the job of finding and uncovering the vehicle's hatch. He became more interested when they discovered the speeder, unlike the modular domes, had managed to maintain its integrity in the face of the onslaughts from Dagobah's tenacious and inventive lifeforms. It was the younglings' turn to watch with baited breath as the Master tried to bring the speeder's systems up. Air left five sets of small lungs in gusty sighs of relief as the piloting console lit up.

Yoda seemed every bit as pleased as his charges. "Excellent. Excellent this is. Learn to pilot you must, this vehicle imperfect but do it will. Now to work! Thoroughly checked it must be!"

And thoroughly checked it was from pilot compartment to engine spaces and everything in between. Each of the five passenger seats was equipped with a built-in datapad above a box for samples but the contents of the compartments built under the seat were a bit of a shock.

"Master!" Uthr backed hastily out from under the seat to a safe distance. His expression said he'd found something poisonous – or worse.

"Found something have you?"

"Yes, Master, blasters," the little Zabrak's voice was as eloquent with shock and disgust as his face.

Yoda nodded sadly. "Expected that I did. Depended on their weapons the scientists did. Afraid they were, afraid of Dagobah."

The younglings looked very serious - they knew all too well what fear led to.

"And that's why they died," Tam said flatly, after a long moment.

"Why, yes." Yoda agreed as solemnly.

….

It was edging on to evening when they finally exited the speeder, sealing the hatch carefully behind them, the ground mist was creeping in around the ruinous domes. Yoda sniffed the air; "Stay here tonight, we will."

They settled themselves in the driest of the domes and Tam lit a fire burying yarrow pods and Ikali roots in the embers to roast while the Master cut up the mushrooms and yoghurt plants Vita and Aiolian had found. After they had eaten Yoda gathered his students around him. "Carefully listen, something new I will show you," immediately five small faces lit up with interest. "Relax, open yourselves."

Five pairs of young eyes closed, after a moment they began to tremble as the fear and despair imprinted upon the Force by the dead research team seeped into their consciousness. "Peace," Yoda said softly, commandingly, "Peace. There is no fear, there is no death. There is only the Force." The younglings struggled for peace, buffeted by the emotions of men and women long dead. Then their other master took a hand.

"_You feel no more than echoes of a pain long past." _Qui-Gon's gentle yet powerful mental voice whispered._ "This is not a place of death but of life, of rebirth. Let the shadows go and feel the light."_

Encouraged the children pushed on, letting the negative emotions pass through them, reaching past as instructed until they reached the promised light.

_Freedom. Release. Incredulous joy and rueful laughter at their own follies as the tormented souls became one with the Force and found peace. _

The children opened their eyes, tears spangling their cheeks. Yoda's wrinkled face was wet as well and the tormented memory of pain and fear was gone from the Force. "Done well you have," said the Master, "very well."


	2. Chapter 2

"Prov-i-dential this find is," Yoda said. "Many, many things we can use. Much to carry home we have."

The younglings nodded their agreement eyeing the rather large pile of swag. "I think we'll have to make more than one trip, Master," said Tam.

"Yes, yes," Yoda agreed, many trips we will make but all this we will take now with us."

Five children turned to stare at their mentor. "You mean with the Force?" Vita asked uncertainly.

Yoda chuckled. "The Force we need not," he tapped Vita's nose gently with the end of his gimmerstick. "Have ve-hi-cle we do!"

"Oh yeah - the speeder," Tam histrionically slapped his forehead.

"I never thought of that," Vita admitted.

"See that I can! Come, come!" The younglings obediently followed their Master through the tubular tunnels and domes back to the overgrown speeder. Yoda gave the greenery still mostly concealing the vehicle a long look then threw a wink over his shoulder at his pupils. "Vines and mud and mushrooms, oh my! A long time to clear by hand it would take, cheat a little we will, eh?" They grinned, knowing what that meant. "Uthr and Aiolian on this side stay. Tam, Vita and Keri to other side you will go." The children arranged themselves as directed. "Now," said the Master, "together all, lift!"

His five padawans closed their eyes, Yoda felt them draw on the Force around them and direct it through their outstretched hands towards the buried speeder. The green vines quivered, stretched and finally snapped with a series of sharp retorts. Slowly eight meters of extremely dirty ceramoid plating dotted with clearsteel windows rose from its green grave shedding mud and bits of plants.

"Where do you want it, Master?" Uthr asked, still in rapport with his classmates, his voice showing only the slightest traces of strain.

"Where ground is flat place it please," Yoda ordered, pointing with his gimmerstick. Slowly, majestically the speeder glided over the heads of Keri and Tam to settle onto the slightly squishy ground of a large mud slick.

The children lowered their arms and drooped a little, clearly tired, but perked up quickly as their Master beamed upon them. "Good! Very, very Good! Talented Padawans I have. Come, come. Breakfast we will eat and then load the speeder and home go."

….

Yoda was not at all pleased with the speeder's performance as the steady stream of grumbles from the oversized pilot's seat made crystal clear to his acolytes. The long vehicle maneuvered gingerly through the densely forested swamp, clearing massive gnarl tree trunks by centimeters and nearly colliding with a flock of astonished bogwings before settling finally on a small rocky knoll on the edge of Dragonsnake bog. Yoda killed the systems and frowned fiercely at the pilot console. "Sluggish it is, too large, not maneuverable. Much work we must do to make it acceptable."

The younglings nodded eagerly. Rebuilding a speeder would be fun. Learning to pilot would be fun too. They would have been learning and doing things like that all the time if they were still in the Temple, if Master Skywalker hadn't turned, if everything hadn't gone hopelessly wrong. Maybe Master Yoda sensed the direction their thoughts were turning because he suddenly became very urgent to get their spoils back to the house, not all of course, there wouldn't be room. In fact there was barely room for what they did bring.

"Crowded this house is getting. Too large you are growing. Time houses of your own you had!"

Bad memories and inchoate regrets for might-have-beens vanished utterly, "Really?" Tam asked eagerly.

"You mean it, Master?" said Uthr.

Yoda snorted. "In habit of saying what I do not mean am I not.

…..

Each of the younglings already had a private place for meditation, sulking, and keeping those things that grown-ups, even eight hundred year old Jedi Masters, _never_ understand about. Turning Uthr and Vita's hideaways, tiny snuggeries hollowed in the root systems of nearby gnarl trees, into houses was easy as they'd all been through this once before when they built Yoda's house. This time they used floor panels from the settlements modular domes for a waterproof foundation and door and window frames from the same source.

"Remember, tall you will grow," Yoda reminded them, so they made the ceilings six feet high instead of four. Vita's house was divided into three bays; one was her kitchen with a little clay fireplace and stove, another was her bed place and the third her workspace. Uthr decided to have storage bins all around the perimeter of his house with his bed platform, made of more floor plates, above two of them and his stove tucked into a nook right next to the door.

Aiolian's private place was a vine hammock dangling between two vestigial branches about eight meters up Vita's gnarl tree, building a house up there was much more of a challenge. Using the light plasmeld and plasmetal building components from the scientists' settlement the younglings created under Yoda's direction three living floors suspended by heavy blackvines from the stubby branches and further supported by pegs hammered into the calcified bark of the tree beneath the plates. More vines were woven into walls and waterproofed with resin mixed with mud. A rift in the trunk was widened and deepened becoming a small fireplace flanked by benches or counters carved into the rocklike wood. More pegs created a sort of ladder for the others. Aiolian herself of course could just fly up.

Keri's refuge was a nest in middle of a tangled thicket of sohrli bushes and galla vines. Clearing a suitably large space in the middle of the almost solid mass of vegetation was hard work but gave them plenty of material for the wattle-and-daub necessary to fill in the spaces between support ribs taken from two or three of the small habitation domes and they used some of the exterior plating for the roofs. The doorway was small and low but the ceilings inside were high enough for a grown humanoid except for the storage space under under the sleep loft.

Tam's favorite spot was a little islet just a good force jump into Dragonsnake bog with a young gnarl tree at one end and a sickle tree at the other leaning out over the dark water which he liked to use as a fishing perch. Tam's hut just fit onto the high dry ground between the two trees and was even bigger than Keri's because Yoda said he would grow _very _tall. They used building modules from the domes to make a long house and pegged the hide of the dragonsnake the younglings had had to kill over the barrel roof, extending it into an awning for a front porch formed like the floor of half-fired clay tiles.

Building the houses was fun and challenging, especially Aiolian's, and planning and furnishing them an absorbing pastime but when it came time to actually move into them – suddenly it stopped being fun.

"A long time building these houses we have been," Yoda declaimed, waving his short arms. "Worked hard we have for a purpose. Crowded my home is. Room to swing a cat I have not!" The ancient master was not exaggerating by much. The six of them did fill his hut near to bursting.

"But, but-" Tam stuttered.

"Won't you be lonely, Master?" Aiolian asked.

"Lonely…" the centuries of his age and a sorrow almost beyond human comprehension settled on Yoda's small, wrinkled face as his big pointed ears drooped. "Yes. Lonely I will be. But alone – never! The Force is with me. With you too it is. Bring you here to keep me company I did not. Last of the Jedi you are. Work the Force has for you. Take you far It will, alone but for It you will be. Such is your destiny." Gooseberry green eyes stared past them into a future only Yoda could see. "Yes, yes, far away will you go. Find others you will and pass on what you have learned. Long the Sith lived in hiding, so too can the Jedi if we must!" He pulled his gaze back from those distant vistas to focus again on the awed and apprehensive younglings around him. "Learn to be alone, you must," he said gently, "To rely only on the Force. First step this is."

….

Aiolian fluttered up the front door of her new house. The gravity on Dagobah was in fact too heavy for her to fly properly she had to use the Force to assist. From the outside it looked very much like an oversized Jubba bird colony nest. Inside a plasmeld table top was set into a niche in the trunk and a shelf carved above it both filled with tools and equipment from the settlement and there was a seat cushion from the speeder tucked under the table. Her vertical loom had been set up in the next room with skeins of yarn hanging from the walls and folded cloth piled in a corner. The final room held the fireplace with dishes and bowls stacked on the counters and supplies hanging from the ceiling in hollowed gourds. Her big vine hammock occupied a bay in the opposite wall and she crawled into it, curling into an unhappy little ball.

'Master Yoda would have died of grief if he didn't have you to teach,' Mistress Skywalker had said. And Aiolian was very much afraid that was true. The look on his face when he'd told them he meant to send them away…. She didn't want Master Yoda to die, too many had died already! But she knew too that death was a natural and necessary part of the Living Force.

"You are focusing on your anxieties, little one," Master Qui-Gon's kindly voice said in her mind.

"I know," she answered, "but –"

"I will have no buts," he interrupted, gently and teasingly but with an underlying firmness. "Leave the future to Master Yoda. Focus on the present, Padawan, you have more than enough to occupy you here and now."

"Yes, Master."

….

Vita put her double handful of leaftail pups down on the thick springy reed mat covering her bed platform then went to the storage bin in the next bay for a similar double handful of berries and nuts which she carried outside to place in front of the indignantly protesting spade headed smooka dangling by its prehensile tail from a fall of vine. It immediately stopped its angry chattering and dropped lower to gather in the offering with its fore claws.

"There you go," Vita told it, "a fair trade." She went back inside to examine the two pups by the artificial light from energy cells taken out of the escape pods' gravity compensators and embedded in the walls. The poor little things were more scared then hurt and cheered up considerably when she offered them some cyanoberries.

Vita lay down beside the replete pups and pulled a blanket over them all. "At least I'm not all alone." She muttered to herself.

…

Uthr poked up the fire in his little stove for light and heat, he'd already eaten with the others back at the Master's house. He climbed into a chair salvaged from the speeder. So they were going to be Jedi Knights after all, they should have known that Yoda wasn't just teaching them to pass the time. Jedi in a galaxy ruled by the Sith. Uthr shivered. The dark cloaked form of Master Skywalker, Darth Vader as he was now, took shape in Uthr mind's eye bringing with it a deeper chill. The boy huddled in his chair hugging his knees.

"Don't frighten yourself, young one," Qui-Gon burst into his mind, an explosion of warm green Living Force.

"Sorry, Master," Uthr muttered clutching the warmth to him.

"Remember by the time you leave this place you will be a Jedi Master, and a most formidable opponent for any Sith."

"I will?" Uthr was dubious.

"I am certain of it," Qui-Gon smiled.

…

Tam's house was too big. Maybe he'd grow into it like Yoda had said but just now it seemed huge and echoing compared to the coziness of the Master's house. A stove, flanked by boxes and shelves, stood against one wall and his workbench against the other piled high with droid parts with the soundest of the A9G frames slumped beside a couple of R5 chassis near the door. The far bay held a bed frame from the domes, a table top with a stump base and two of the speeder seats – all of them too big.

Tam turned to the workbench and started sorting through the droid bits. How could they be Jedi Knights? They didn't even have lightsabres! And how were they supposed to get off Dagobah without a ship? But suppose they could….suppose he did become a Knight…. He could confront Master Skywalker – Darth Vader – make him pay for what he'd done…. Tam was a Jedi Initiate he could recognize Dark thoughts when he had them, and this one wasn't new to him. He tried to distract himself with the droid part in his hands, a vocoder. Only a few bad components if he could find replacements for them he'd have somebody to talk to.

….

Keri was quite pleased with her house. She had more of an aesthetic sense than the others and had given both care and thought to looks as well as function. Her window spaces were filled with pieces of colored glassite filters set in resin glazed vine lattices. Lacy vine screens shielded kitchen and work spaces. A lahdia plant grew in a yellow clay planter at the edge of the sleeping loft, displaying its colorful flower-fruits in the warm yellow light of the energy cells clustered in the high domed ceiling. She had a table top of greenish ceramoid plate from the roof of the speeder and a sort of lounge made up of parts of several broken chairs from the domes and covered with shaggy sloth furs. After a moments' hesitation Keri settled herself on the lounge rather than climbing up to her bed. It was pretty inside her house – and there wasn't much that was pretty on Dagobah – but it was also lonely without Master Yoda, without the others. If being a Jedi Knight meant being lonely Keri was sure she wasn't going to like it at all.

…

Yoda woke, shortly before dawn, in his little sleep loft pulled on his robes and dropped the vine rope ladder intending to make himself a cup of Yarum tea before beginning his private mediations. He descended and stepped off – right onto Uthr's stomach. The little Zabrak woke with an oof as a startled Yoda lost his footing and fell hard onto his backside looking around the Master saw two more of his pupils sitting up in nests of slothhair blankets Aiolian in the kitchen area and Keri in the washing cubicle.

"What is this? In your own houses you were to sleep!"

The younglings exchanged guilty looks. "We did Master, for part of the night anyway," said Uthr.

"Most of it," added Keri.

"We got lonely," Aiolian admitted.

Yoda blew out a long sigh but before he could say any of the things he was thinking Qui-Gon's voice intervened. "It was only their first night, Yoda, you must be patient."

The Ancient Master all but choked on indignation and laughter, "My line that is!"

No words but warm amusement from Qui-Gon, who had been a frequent recipient of those words. Yoda gave in and smiled at his relieved Padawans. "Yes, Master, patient I will be. And try harder our learners will?"

"Yes, Master," they agreed.


	3. Chapter 3

Vita and Tam were just a bit superior about having slept the whole night in their own houses – though both admitted they had had company; Vita's two Leaftail cubs and Tam's AyNineGee droid, activated and articulate for all it was still in pieces all over his workbench.

After breakfast Master Yoda collected them in the clearing between his house and Vita and Aiolian's tree and ordered them to sit and wait while he went inside. The younglings barely had time to exchange inquisitive glances before he was back, carrying a well wrapped bundle the size of his head which he put on the ground and proceeded to unwind. The children leaned forward, fascinated as the layers of fine gray silk fell away and gave little gasp as a large, roughly ovoid kyber crystal was revealed, scintillating blue-white in Dagobah's subdued sunlight.

Keri scooted closer, eyes round. "Is that the Great Crystal, Master?"

"Great Crystal it is," Yoda answered heavily. "Meditation Crystal of the High Council, imprinted with the minds and thoughts of the greatest of the Jedi it is, heart and soul of the Order." He bowed his head, ears slanting downward as wrinkled lids half covered his gooseberry eyes. The crystal at his feet abruptly shattered into a dozen or more glittering fragments.

The children gasped and Yoda smiled a little grimly. "Shocked you have I, young ones?"

"Yes, Master," Uthr admitted. The others nodded emphatic agreement.

Yoda looked down at the pieces, long mouth setting in a hard line. "No High Council have we now. The Jedi Order the five of you are. Need crystals for your lightsabres we do, and for other purposes." He raised his head to look at them. "Fear not, nothing lost is." He tapped his deeply wrinkled forehead. "Here it all is." His gaze intensified, became a little frightening. "Powerful will I make you, cunning, wise, worthy to carry on the Way. Choose your crystals, now your real training begins."

…

_Eight years later:_

"No." Tam straightened from his combat crouch and extinguished his blade, hanging his lightsabre on his belt eyes steady on the dark, hooded form lowering at him. "I will not become you, Master Skywalker." He let out a long sigh and with it more than a decade of grief and anger and the Force flooded in, filling the spaces where darkness had lurked with Its warmth and light.

The black cloaked shape surged forward, a red lightsabre flashed up, then down passing through Tam's unflinching body like the illusion it was and then it was gone like a bad dream – like a dozen years' worth of bad dreams. Tam stood still and breathed then turned and walked the winding path that led out of the Dark Cave.

Yoda was waiting outside, small wrinkled face beaming. "Well done! Proud of you I am." Tam dropped to his knees and swept the little Master into a tight embrace. "Proud am I but breath I cannot!" Yoda wheezed.

"Oh. Sorry, Master." Tam let him go

"A Jedi Knight now you are." Yoda said, patting his arm.

"It will be a hard life," Master Qui-Gon's warm, gentle voice said out of the air. His luminous form took shape against the drifting mists as he continued; "One without reward, without remorse, without regret. A path will be laid before you, the choice is yours alone. Do what you think you cannot do." He smiled. "It will be a hard life. But you will find out who you are."

"I think I already have," Tam said huskily, "or at least who I will not be."

…

Yoda and Tam walked back to the cluster of little houses, passing through the stand of ancient, petrified gnarltrees that surrounded the Dark Cave and circling round the north end of Dragonsnake Bog, though stands of sohli and sickle trees and curtains of vines and across the gnarltree bridge to the open space in front of Yoda's tree.

The first thing Tam saw was Keri hovering in midair deep in meditation orbited by a collection of rounded boulders. Shrieks of laughter floated down from the forest canopy high overhead where Vita and Aiolian were obviously engaged in one of their livelier sparring matches. Keri's eyes popped open and he grinned and gave her a high sign. She unfolded her legs setting hooved feet to ground and ran to give him a congratulatory hug. "Told you so didn't I?"

"You did," Tam admitted, hugging her back. "One of these days I'll learn to listen to you."

Keri snorted. "Believe that when I see it will I!" she answered in Yoda talk.

Uthr emerged from the Master's house, straightened up brushing his knees. "Fourth time the charm I see." He said to Tam with a wink then turned to Yoda. "I found the trouble, Master, a morp took up residence in your waste water pipe." He opened a hand showing the small poisonous green amphibian. "I'll find him a new place to live."

"Do so quickly," said Yoda, "and then return. Talk to you all we must." As Uthr moved past him towards the bog Yoda tilted his head upwards; "Vita, Aiolian, down here come."

The two girls arrived about the same time as Uthr returned, Vita sliding down a hanging vine and Aiolian fluttering to a neat landing next to Tam, who she hugged. "Made it!'

"At last," he answered, hugging back.

"Thank goodness," said Vita unsentimentally, "You've been _very_ hard to live with!"

"There's an understatement for you," said Uthr.

"Sit down and be quiet you will!" Yoda ordered before Tam could respond. Obediently the five new knights settled themselves in a half circle in front of their Master.

Tam had indeed grown tall, 1.90 meters, still blond haired and blue eyed but with stubble growing on his squared jaw and big hands resting on his knees promising more growth to come. Uthr sat beside him, shorter, slimmer and darker. Master Yoda had tattooed his face, in accordance with Zabrak custom, in a design of wandering lines meant to symbolize the wending, ever changing channels of the Dagoban Swamp. Tam's Jedi robes were the off-white of bleached gnarlfiber, Uthr's all shades of brown and tan.

Vita still preferred tight slothskin tunics, but she filled them out rather differently these days her face was flushed from her exercise beneath its golden olive and her black hair fell bone straight to the backs of her thighs. Aiolian next to her looked too fair and fragile to be real, her folded wings seeming to be part of her snowy white mosscloth dress, her pale waving hair touched with just the slightest hint of gold. Keri sat at the opposite end of their half circle, on Tam's other side. Her hair had darkened to a purplish red and grew in a crest from forehead to nape baring a cluster of yellow horns and the post-puberty strawberry spotting characteristic of Theelin females. Her flat hooves, so practical for boggy ground, were tucked neatly under her mossy green trouser skirt.

Yoda studied them gravely, one by one, as Master Qui-Gon materialized behind him, glimmering softly in the misty Dagoban light. "Jedi Knights now you are," the little Master said at last. "Know the Force you do. Know yourselves, your weaknesses and your strengths, you do. But experience you have not and experience you _must _have if you are to become Masters." The young people exchanged glances. Masters?

"Experience have I, eight hundred years of it. Experience has Qui-Gon, and wisdom greater than mine." Behind Yoda's back Master Jinn pursed his lips and shook his head in disagreement. "Give our experience to you we will."

"You mean like the stories?" Tam ventured uncertainly.

Yoda shook his head. "No. Remember holocrons do you?"

Of course they did but – "We don't have any do we, Master?" asked Keri.

"No. No holocron have we," Yoda answered flatly.

"Holocron technology is an adaptation of a much older Jedi practice," Qui-Gon's strong, quiet voice put in. "Formerly Masters imprinted the sum of their knowledge, their experiences, not on an artificial organic-crystal lattice but on the neural systems of their chosen successor."

Yoda heaved a sigh. "Very advanced this technique is," His ears drooped. "Difficult it will be – for all of us." Clearly he was not looking forward to the experience which made his students more than a little nervous.

Master Qui-Gon warmed them all with his smile. "I've yet to encounter anything worth doing that wasn't difficult."

Yoda chuckled. "True! Very true that is, my Master!"

…

_Eight months later:_

It was difficult. The subject had to remain entirely passive while reliving past events with the Master, which wasn't at all easy given the terrifying nature of some of those events! But if you didn't your consciousness battled the Master's and the meld fell apart.

On the other hand it was enlightening to discover that Master Yoda really had been young once and was sometimes uncertain of himself even now. And communing with Master Qui-Gon was like communing directly with the Force – or maybe, given his state of being, that was exactly what they were doing!

The Master frowned at the high craggy ceiling high overhead and sat up to look around a strangely familiar unfamiliar place. It seemed to be a sort of cave converted into a dwelling with alcoves for cooking and storage as well as the sleep platform and slightly oversized furniture….

_No, wait. I am Vita, not Yoda. This is my house._

She shook her head hard to clear it and the world fell into its accustomed focus. All and all she was very glad to be on Dagobah rather than Raxus Prime but the feeling of being a stranger in her own body lingered, she felt unsteady on feet without the tridactyl gripping claws and her eyes were too high above the ground. She emerged into the dim, damp Dagoban morning and made her way down to Dragonsnake Bog, getting used to being Vita again. Standing ankle deep in semi-liquid mud she looked across the narrow channel to Tam's island to see him sitting shirtless in tranquil meditation precariously balanced on a jutting gnarltree root.

"You're going to catch your death," she observed.

His eyes focused on her and he grinned. "No I won't. It's good to be Master Qui-Gon!"

"Being Master Yoda has its points too," she said absently, trying to decide which was worse – feeling too big in your body or much too small.

"Agree I do." And there was Yoda himself, chiseling fungi out crevices in a shoreline gnarltree. Vita waded over to him and gave him a hug. "For what is that?"

"For all the awful times you've had," she answered. "Hard it is being Master Yoda!"

"I've noticed," Tam agreed. Stepping off his root he walked lightly across the surface of the bog to join them.

"Show off," said Vita.

"Qui-Gon's path a stroll in the park was not," Yoda observed. His ears drooped. "Made it harder did I."

Vita hugged him again and whispered, "Without remorse, without regret," into one sail-like ear.

…..

Aiolian was performing _alchaka,_ meditation in motion, dancing lightly upon the interwoven boughs of the forest canopy ethereal, almost translucent, in the warm sunlight. A horned head with a mane of red-black hair pushed its way through the tangle of leafy twigs. "Aha! Found you I have, lunchtime it is."

She stopped dancing, small bare feet braced on separate branches, and smiled. "Still thinking in Whill?"

Uthr nodded ruefully. "Know now why Master Yoda talks like this I do."

"It'll wear off," she said carelessly and dived below the green and leafy sea of the canopy.

"Soon enough for me that cannot be," Uthr muttered and followed springing lightly from branch to branch dodging the occasional bogwing or flock of Jubba birds with Aiolian spiraling merrily around him on her spread wings.

…..

Her mind was clear and still, her awareness fixed on the stream of boiling water pouring from battered metal kettle to round clay cup. Gently she laid aside the kettle and selected an orange yarum seed ball from the bowl in front of her and crumbled it into the cup. Tendrils of orange color coiled their way through the dark clarity of the water and a strong scent filled her nostrils. She picked up the cup in both hands and rose from her knees in a single surge of strength from thighs and calves. Turning she walked exactly three paces before sinking to her knees again to place the cup carefully on the stump table.

"Well done," Master Qui-Gon's soft voice said into her ear. Keri blinked as thought, sensation and other distractions came flooding back. Master Yoda sat on the other side of the little table sipping his tea.

"Agree I do," he said.

Keri smiled a little. "So that's what it means to be aware of the moment."

"That's exactly what it means," Qui-Gon agreed.


End file.
